


The Shadows are Darker When the Sun is Bright

by EndoplasmicPanda



Series: Endo's Oneshots [1]
Category: Naruto
Genre: AAAAANGGGGGSTTTT, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Dead Naruto, Dead Sasuke, Depression, Drug Abuse, Gen, Hokage Haruno Sakura, Post-war epilogue AU, implied PTSD
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-05-10
Updated: 2017-05-10
Packaged: 2018-10-30 06:42:55
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,473
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10871250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EndoplasmicPanda/pseuds/EndoplasmicPanda
Summary: She remembersthatTeam 7, from all those years ago, and then remembers the real Team 7, with bickering teammates and bloody spars and careful, loving admonishment. She remembers the Team 7 without Sasuke, remembers the Team 7 where it was just her and Kakashi for three long years. Remembers Sai and Yamato, sets aside her guilt for not visiting them in far too long, remembers Naruto’s grin and Sasuke’s smile.They loved her. She loved them.Can she love herself?(In which Naruto and Sasuke are dead, Sakura is Hokage, and it's been fifteen long years.)





	The Shadows are Darker When the Sun is Bright

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by Jam-art/Jamsker's fantastic Hokage Sakura fan art from like two years ago, found [here!](http://jam-art.tumblr.com/post/111686028123/15-years-after-the-most-powerful-alternative)
> 
> Thanks to the lovely [**MaethoMixup**](http://archiveofourown.org/users/MaethoMixup/pseuds/MaethoMixup) for betaing this for me! She did a fantastic job. 
> 
> Let me know what you thought! Thanks for reading.

It seems like a good idea at the time.

The room is full - packed to the teeth with clan heads and jounin and ANBU and a smattering of civilians who are there more out of curiosity than any sort of intention to participate. But their presence worries Sakura even still, and when the council chamber doors are finally pulled shut by a pair of flustered genin, she can’t help but breathe a quiet sigh of relief.

When the meeting falls into place, and the question is finally raised, Sakura raises her hand.

“I’ll do it,” Sakura says, and the sea of bickering voices dies out in an unceremonious sputter of surprise.

Her arm throbs beside her.

“Sakura,” Tsunade whispers to her right, “you don’t have to do this.”

She narrows her eyes. “I _want_ to do this.”

_For them or for me?_

“You realize that once I submit your name alongside the others, there’s nothing I can do to stop it. You can’t just back out of something like this without consequences.”

“I know what will happen if I change my mind,” Sakura says. Her eyes are sweeping across the room, jumping from face to face. She expects to find resentment; expects to find derision. Instead, she sees surprise. _Acceptance._

“Sakura,” Tsunade sighs again, “if this is about your teammates--”

“This isn’t about them,” Sakura replies. She means for it to come out clear and commanding, but her voice stumbles halfway through and throws her composure. “This is about me. I... know what I want, Lady Tsunade. Please. Add my name to the list.”

The room is dead quiet. Tsunade leans forward, inks Sakura’s name onto the parchment before her.

Sakura doesn’t bother waiting. She knows what will happen next. She bursts through the doors, makes her way out towards the village, and tries not to listen to the roar of the crowd behind her.

 

* * *

 

She doesn’t expect the results, yet does all the same.

Sakura stares at the television screen mounted to the wall across the restaurant from her, tries not to frown when she sees her own face staring back at her.

“The margins were slim,” the announcer states, “but the legacy of Team 7--”

“Could you turn that off, please?” Sakura asks the nice lady behind the counter, and drowns out the words she catches until then as best she can by swallowing the rest of her tea in one quiet gulp.

Her arm throbs beside her.

“Of course, dear,” the woman says with a smile. Her eyes fall onto the picture on the screen. She blinks. “Say, isn’t that you?”

“Hey, congratulations!” an unfamiliar voice calls from outside, but when she turns, looks behind her, she sees nothing but the normal sea of unknown faces.

Sakura reaches for her pocket, pulls out her wallet and moves to stand in one fluid motion. “Actually, ma’am, I don’t think I’ll be having that second cup.” She gives a polite smile, begins to count what she owes in her palm.

“Oh, no, please!” the woman exclaims, shaking her head. “Consider this one on the house.”

Sakura blinks, putting her coins back in her pocket. “Oh, well that’s very kind of you. Thank you very much.”

“Of course,” the woman says. She winks. “And congratulations… Lady Sixth.”

 

* * *

 

The nightmare comes again, just as vivid and just as fierce.

_They’re dead._

Consciousness consumes her in a rush of light and nausea and poorly forgotten memories. She makes it to the bathroom in time, only just, and empties the contents of her strained stomach into the toilet in the corner.

_They’re dead and there’s nothing I can do._

Sakura sighs, slinks back against the wall with a dull thud, slides to the ground. She can see the sun rising outside her window, dipping through the curtains - she must not have slept for very long.

She shakes her head in a poor attempt to clear it of cloudy thoughts, forces herself to her feet and towards her kitchen sink.

A familiar face, lost behind a sea of wild pink hair and pale skin, stares at her.

She blinks, and the next thing she sees is the face of a war-torn, bloodied Sakura, eyes wild and chakra flaring. Her body is glowing green, so bright and violent that it seems to tear at reality, and her arm--

Sakura pulls at the mirror a little too hastily, and the door to her medicine cabinet flies open. Pill bottles and tubes of ointment and her toothbrush go flying, scattering across her bathroom floor in an explosive rattle. She curses, scrambles forward to catch another bottle before it can fall, too.

She cleans up, only slightly angry at herself, and returns to the mirror. Below her, sitting at the bottom of her sink and catching droplets of water from her leaky faucet, sits a pill bottle she missed.

Her arm thrums; her fingers itch.

“Ah, there it is,” she says, mostly to steel herself; to give herself false confidence. She pushes the mirror shut again.

She unscrews the cap, pops two pills, and forces a smile. The pain vanishes.

“Today is the big day,” the Sakura in the mirror says. “This is it.”

_This is for them._

 

* * *

 

Three weeks pass. Sakura sleeps through none of them. Shizune suggests sleeping medication, and she reluctantly agrees.  

She doesn’t mention the phantom pain. She doesn’t mention the nightmares.

Drugged sleep proves just as dreadful, but Sakura at the very least no longer remembers what startles her awake at night. She sleeps in chunks; and when that doesn’t work, she tackles her work early.

“Don’t you have work to be doing?” Kakashi asks one morning, when he comes to meet her in the Hokage’s office at her behest.

Sakura furrows her brow. “What, like I’m doing now?”

Kakashi gives a pointed glance at her desk.

“Ahh,” she says, catching on. “I see.”

“This is the cleanest I have seen this office in years.”

Sakura shrugs, lets out a sigh. “I have… time.”

Kakashi watches her, takes in the creases under her eyes and the tired gaze she returns him with.

“You can’t sleep, either, I see,” he says after a moment of silence.

Sakura huffs, leans back in her chair. Her smile is as hollow as her eyes. “Is it really that obvious?”

“Why did you do it, Sakura?” Kakashi asks, folding his hand in his lap and looking at her. The question isn’t patronizing.

“I wanted…” She pauses. “ _They_ wanted it so bad. This was their dream. This was _Naruto’s_ dream.”

Kakashi hums in agreement. “That may be so. But, is it _yours?”_

“I raised my hand in that meeting,” Sakura says, “because I want this village to be safe. I want to give it the future it deserves. Naruto wanted it. Sasuke wanted it - even if his methods were… different. And I always wanted them to be happy. So… I guess in a way, their dream was mine too.”

“You knew it was an election,” Kakashi says delicately. “You knew Tsunade wanted her successor chosen by popular vote.”

_You knew you would win because of their memory._

“It was something I wouldn’t have agreed to if I didn’t fully understand the consequences,” Sakura says, taking care with each word. It was something she had rehearsed time and time again, while sitting up at night staring at the ceiling and counting the bubbles in the paint. “I knew there was a chance, Kakashi-sensei.”

Kakashi watches her, motionless and silent. It feels as though he’s scanning her; reading her mind.

Finally, after a tense minute of silence where Sakura tries all manner of quiet adjustments in her chair to make herself seem more confident and relaxed than she actually was and fails catastrophically, Kakashi hums again. “Okay. What did you want to see me for?”

Sakura bites her lip. “I… wanted to know if you would be willing to come back to active duty, Kakashi-sensei.”

He raises an eyebrow. “Oh?”

“You… wouldn’t have to go out on any missions,” Sakura says. “You could always stay here, in the village. Lend your services some other way.”

She pauses. “You could teach.”

“Sakura,” Kakashi says, and his voice is a little bit colder than normal, “you and I both know that that’s probably not the best idea.”

She looks him in the eye, reads the unease buried deep within his mind. “Okay,” is all she says.

Her arm twitches. She shakes it off.

“Injured?” Kakashi asks.

“No, just phantom pain,” Sakura says. “That’s all.”

Kakashi nods.

More silence. More unanswered questions, and unspoken replies.

“Did you know,” Kakashi starts a few moments later, after the quiet becomes too much to bear, “Tsunade asked me to run? For the hat.”

Sakura blinks. “Really?”

“I can’t see it, myself,” he smiles. “Maybe in another life. But now?”

He sighs, leans to his feet, pulls his plain white robe level across his shoulders. “Now, I like being retired. I’m… content.”

_But not happy._

“You know?” Sakura says, standing out of politeness for her guest as he leaves, “I’m the same way.”

_Because I’m not happy, either._

 

* * *

 

A decade passes. Nothing changes. _Everything_ changes.

Sakura looks out her window, watches the sky’s reflection drift across the walls of glass and steel built atop the mountain.

She twitches, fights the urge to pull her concealed pill bottle from the bottom drawer in her desk. Rather than fidget, she bolts upright, heads to the door, pulls her coat over her shoulders and heads down to the village. She may as well be early to her meeting. It never hurt to be careful, after all.

She passes the security desk at the front, waves to the guards by the door, and steps into the quiet heat of a late fall afternoon.

Villagers stop her as she makes her way down the city streets, shake her hand and ask for pictures. They all say the same thing: _“Thank you.”_

It hurts. Just a little, but it hurts. She can’t explain why.

Her arm throbs at her side.

 

* * *

 

Tsunade grunts. “Can’t believe it’s been fifteen years already.”

Sakura gives her a tired smile. “I can.”

“Hmph,” Tsunade smiles, throwing an arm over the booth behind her. “You look tired, at the very least. Are you still taking those sleeping pills Shizune prescribed?”

“Oh, I stopped those a long time ago,” Sakura says.

_Because I found something that works even better._

“Have the nightmares stopped?”

Sakura winces. “Not… exactly.”

Tsunade lets out a long sigh. “Sakura…”

“I’m fine, really, I am.” She smiles, swipes the hair at her neck and pulls open the restaurant menu.

“You don’t look fine.”

She freezes. “Sensei?”

“You know, I suspected a long time ago, but I didn’t want to say anything,” Tsunade says. “You seemed to be keeping it together rather well, and, well… I’m one to talk.”

She shifts in her seat, leans forward. “But I know a hangover when I see one, and I know you don’t drink.”

Sakura bites her lip. “I... tried.”

“You tried?”

“To quit,” she says, sighing. “I just… can’t. Not when there’s so much to do and so many people to meet. To go through everything it would take to get clean now? It would take weeks. Weeks I don’t have.”

“There’s medical ninjutsu that can help with the side effects. You know that.”

Sakura’s expression steels. “You know how I feel about medical ninjutsu, Lady Tsunade.”

The blonde watches her for a moment, and the gaze reminds Sakura of someone else. “I really wish you hadn’t inherited so many of my problems. If I’d have known this would happen, I never would have agreed to become your teacher.”

Sakura’s eyes widen. “Tsunade?”

“Did you know,” she says, “that before I came back to the Leaf to serve as the Fifth Hokage, I was petrified of blood?”

Sakura blinked. “Vaguely?”

“As much as Shizune pushed me, I was never able to work. Couldn’t do research, or read material - not like I would have anyway.” She grunts in amusement. “Couldn’t even heal myself. Poor Shizune, had to learn everything the hard way - by being my babysitter.”

“But you came back anyway,” Sakura says.

“But I came back anyway,” Tsunade agrees. “I had my problems. But I was... reminded of what was important.”

Sakura tenses.

 _Naruto_.

“That’s what you need, Sakura,” Tsunade says. “To be reminded of what’s important. To _you_. I’m no psychiatrist - that’s not my field. But I’m speaking to you as a friend.”

Silence. The diner moves along around them, oblivious.

“Do you know,” Sakura says, voice quiet and gaze unfocused on the table, “why I quit the medic program?”

“Something about wanting to try different things?” Tsunade said, raising an eyebrow. “Beats me. You volunteered to run for the hat, so it sure as hell wasn’t because you were looking for something less stressful.”

_They’re dead._

“It was the end of the war,” Sakura says. “Madara and Obito had been defeated. We had won. All that was left was to wake everyone up.”

_They’re both dead._

“Naruto and Sasuke… ran off to fight.”

_I… I can’t do anything._

“They fought all night, blowing up half the Land of Lightning. The place is _still_ unrecognizable.”

_Nothing’s working._

“When the sun finally came up, and the explosions stopped, Kakashi-sensei and I went out to find the winner.” Sakura pauses. “Everyone started waking up. We were optimistic.”

_They’re both bleeding out._

Tsunade hums. “I see.”

_Two arms, two bodies._

Sakura looks up at her. “I sat there, sensei. I sat there for twelve hours. Forcing chakra into their bodies, trying to keep them alive.”

_One arm. One body._

“Sasuke died first.” She bites her lip. “I suppose in the grand scheme of things, he was doing Naruto a favor. Or, at least, was trying to.”

She laughs. “It was almost like he was trying to apologize. I suppose, in that case, Naruto was the winner of their spat after all.”

_Green. Green chakra, green blood._

“I spent the rest of the time with Naruto,” she says. “Forced him to stay alive. Was successful, for the most part.”

_He’s fading._

“But… after a while…”

_I don’t know what I’m doing wrong._

”Well, you know the rest.”

Tsunade is quiet; motionless. She nods, eyes trained on the far wall, then blinks and refocuses. “Sakura. I’m sorry.”

“I didn’t know what to do,” Sakura says, sighing. “Damaged my hand from working for so long. It healed, but...”

She flexes her fingers into her palm, feels the pain in her forearm blossom and spread.

“I remember that,” Tsunade mutters. “God, it was so long ago.”

“Fifteen years,” Sakura says again. “Fifteen long years.”

“Sakura, why are you doing this?”

She frowns. “I already said, I don’t want to do anything right now--”

“No. I mean… your job.”

There it was. The question she had been dreading. For some reason, telling Tsunade was the hardest.

_Lying to her is the hardest._

“I… want to do it for them.” She smiles. “I want _something_ good to come from Team 7.”

“Sakura, something good _did_ come of Team 7.” Tsunade looks at her. “You three came of Team 7. Naruto and Sasuke may have died, but they died heroes. They defeated an entire army. Everything we have now is because of them.”

_And I’m wallowing in the afterbirth of their victory._

“And then there’s you.”

Sakura swallows a breath. She can’t bear to look at Tsunade; not now.

“You’re the most successful Hokage, save for maybe the Third. And even then, you’ve done as much in fifteen years as he did in almost forty. Economic development and urban growth are at an all-time high, technology is expanding… you’ve done the office justice.” She pauses; Sakura knows she’s smiling in that faraway way. “My grandfather would have been very proud. I know I’m proud.”

Sakura’s arm itches.

_Then why do I feel so guilty?_

 

* * *

 

More months. More pills. More indecision.

 

* * *

 

Sakura finds herself outside of Ino’s shop by the grace of poorly monitored footsteps.

“Have you been to see them yet?” Ino asks, voice quiet and respectful.

Sakura’s silence is all the answer she needs.

“Go,” she tells her, forcing a pair of flower bushels into her arms.

Sakura’s mind wanders her there without debate.

 

* * *

 

“Hi,” is all she can think of when she first arrives.

Their graves are mossy and overgrown, but for some reason Sakura feels they look better that way.

Their monuments in the village, tall and foreboding and full of Konoha spirit, are well manicured and kept under careful eye. Sakura herself has made sure of that. But their actual graves, buried far in the forest away from the prying eyes of a forgetful future, have fallen into disrepair.

“I’m… sorry.” She takes her hat off, cups it against her side. A gust of wind tousles with the flowers in her hand. “For taking so long to show up.”

_Have I done you proud?_

“The village is doing well,” she says. “Konohamaru is getting married soon. He wants me to give a speech.”

Sakura snorts. She’s not sure if it’s at the story or at herself. “But… I don’t know. That would require me to actually hold some sort of position of power, but…”

_I might be out of a job soon._

“Anyways.” Why is she so flustered? She knows they’re not there. But… there’s power in a grave. A sort of low hum that itches at the back of one’s subconscious.

Perhaps, Sakura thinks, it’s her memories of them trying return to the source.

“It’s been fifteen years,” she says, out of posterity. “I’ve… been Hokage for fifteen years.”

_Why does it feel like I’ve failed?_

“The village is doing well.”

_It would have done better under you._

“I…”

She sees the tear drop before she feels it. It falls, lands in the nondescript space between their two graves and passes through the leaves of a weed.

She swears she hears it hit the ground, the sound of a meteor obliterating a mountainside.

_Can I do it?_

The trees around her whisper reassurances through the wind.

_Or am I too scared to even overcome my own weaknesses?_

“I want to quit.”

She says it before she can take it back.

The breeze dies. So does her hesitation.

“I’m not happy anymore.” She sighs, wipes at her eye with her sleeve.

_I never deserved this._

“I… want to get back into medicine.” She smiles. “There’s a lot of interesting science out right now that I haven’t seen in action. Shizune swears up and down by it.”

_Guilt for quitting, or guilt for trying at all?_

“Of course, we’ll have to find a successor… maybe Konohamaru. He always reminded me of Naruto, anyways. It wouldn’t be too hard to get him to run. The village loves him.”

She looks up, watches the clouds run marathons in the sky.

Their graves are quiet. Her mind is not.

Maybe that was it all along. Sasuke and Naruto and the memory of a Team 7 that existed for all of a summer in the haze of childhood ignorance… she was putting it before herself. She was projecting her insecurities. Giving them faces - with coal-black eyes and scruffy blond hair.

_Will I feel better as a free woman? Or will I feel worse?_

She looks down at the gravestones, traces the carefully carved kanji with her eyes, spells out their names in her head.

A smile crosses her face.

She remembers that Team 7, from all those years ago, and then remembers the _real_ Team 7, with bickering teammates and bloody spars and careful, loving admonishment. She remembers the Team 7 without Sasuke, remembers the Team 7 where it was just her and Kakashi for three long years. Remembers Sai and Yamato, sets aside her guilt for not visiting them in far too long, remembers Naruto’s grin and Sasuke’s smile.

They loved her. She loved them.

And…

The wind throws her white coat around in the air.

_Maybe that was it all along._

Would Naruto and Sasuke ever be angry at her? Be disappointed?

The sunlight catches the reflection of the leaves above her head, casts a puppet show in the shadows before her.

She smiles.

_I have nothing to be sorry for._

She takes the flowers, frames them in front of their headstones with careful readjustment. Her hat lays heavy in her hands, and she traces the _fire_ kanji with a finger.

“This was never mine to begin with,” she mutters to herself, and sets the hat between them.

Her arm, for once, doesn’t hurt at all.

 

* * *

 

 

When Kakashi visits Naruto and Sasuke’s graves the next week, the words of Sakura’s resignation speech tumbling about in his mind, he finds a red hat, two sets of white flowers, and a pill bottle.

 

* * *

  



End file.
